Jon Fansmith: Hello and welcome to dotEDU ,the higher education policy podcast from the American Council on Education. I'm your host, Jon Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations here at ACE, and I'm joined by my true and stalwart companions, Mushtaq Gunja and Sarah Spreitzer. How are you both doing today?
Sarah Spreitzer: I think stalwart is a really good word, Jon, that we haven't abandoned ship at this point.
Jon Fansmith: On the podcast or on public policy or...
Sarah Spreitzer: Just internal. Yep. All those things. All those things.
Jon Fansmith: That's fair. We are going to follow up in a little bit with the discussion, we had a webinar that we hosted our dotEDU Live as we record this yesterday, Tuesday, January 28th. It was done in response to the OMB white paper, OMB memo, freezing all federal grant funding, trying to unpack exactly what that meant. It is worth noting because many things were fluid, you'll hear us reference that during the recording, things are changing rapidly. After we finished recording yesterday, a federal judge issued an injunction against the OMB's actions, the administration's actions to freeze federal spending. That injunction runs out next Monday as we record this February 3rd at 5 PM so certainly big development in this area.
We've also, since that time, heard some additional information from the Department of Education. Nothing formal yet. That'll be another recurring theme you'll hear as we discuss this, but that some programs like funding for HBCUs and TCUs through Title III would not also be included in freeze, so they would be exempt from the freeze. Again, nothing formal as we record this, from the department confirming that, a lot of lack of clarity in terms of what exactly will be covered by the freeze. So still things to pick apart and now we at least have a reprieve of a few days to learn a little bit more and figure out what exactly is going on here. But Sarah, Mushtaq, clearly the big news of the week, thoughts that weren't covered on the webinar, things you'd want to add to this discussion?
Sarah Spreitzer: Well, I would say at least the big news of the week so far because, we're still seeing the White House issue executive orders. Also, we were really lucky yesterday to be joined by Ted Mitchell, our president, for the conversation to really kind of give that high level national view of how is this really going to impact higher education? And so yeah, even though we already have an injunction, it was a good conversation. Mushtaq, as our in-house podcast lawyer, we were sad to miss you, but what does the injunction actually mean?
Mushtaq Gunja: Yes, and I was sorry not to be able to be on yesterday and you two and Ted did a great job sort of unpacking this for the audience. Jon, you said nothing formal and I think that applies actually also to the arguments that were around this injunction, I think what the federal judge characterized as a brief administrative stay, which is not language that one typically sort of associates. Typically, there's a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction. We've got something that's a little bit unusual here, partially because I think what the Trump administration did here was pretty unusual. I think we're going to learn a lot more over the course of the next couple of days about what the Trump administration intended to have covered and not intended to have covered by this memo. I guess I have a couple of quick thoughts, one legal and maybe one more political.
Jon, you referenced a couple of times in this webinar the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, and I think you're very wise to do that because what the Trump administration seems to be doing is invoking this authority potentially to not spend all the dollars that Congress has allocated. I thought that maybe what we would see in court yesterday was the beginning of an argument under the Impoundment Control Act, but as I'm reading what happened in court yesterday, again, nothing formal yet. We don't have formal briefing papers. We don't really know yet. It didn't seem like they were making an argument that they have the inherent authority to impound under the ICA, which would. among other things, require 45 days notice to Congress that they're planning on sort of invoking this authority. They didn't go down that route. Instead, it seems like the Trump administration is just trying to assert some inherent executive authority under the constitution to be able to, I'm reading from here, “make sure that spending is consistent with the president's priorities," which I don't know where that comes from.
So we're down a slightly different legal set of arguments than I think I thought we were going to be under, because I think you're right to side of the Impoundment Control Act. I think legal scholars have been sort of getting ready for an argument under that because there were some signs in the waning days of the last Trump administration that he wanted to have this fight. Maybe we'll have it, maybe we won't. I'm not totally sure what's going to happen when the papers actually go in here. So on the legal side, I think it's going to be really interesting to see what comes out in the next couple of days and then how we want to sort of talk about it after that.
Just on the politics real quick. It's obvious in the last 24 hours that since the memo was issued, there's been a lot of walk back of it doesn't apply to HBCUs, it doesn't apply to Medicaid, it doesn't apply to whatever. You read the memo and none of that is clear. I mean, the memo is... You can't do all the things you want to do in a two-page memo the way that they've done it here. And so it wasn't politically vetted and I think that's important in a couple of ways. Contra immigration, where the president has been talking about what he wanted to do with immigration for months, years, we knew something was coming in that regard. Here, this took everybody by surprise and when it's not politically vetted, meaning that he hasn't been talking about it, I think that they may not have appreciated the amount of pushback that they were going to get from red states and blue states and citizens who are affected by all these grants.
What that means, I think, for what this ultimately looks like and what they argue in court on Monday, I think it's going to be really interesting and I think we'll just have to sort of see, but this is the time for all of us, I think probably to be putting a little bit of political pressure on right? Contacting our representatives, explaining what the impact of these grant pauses are on our constituents, on the citizens. These are not like government spending means that they're spending on people. As Sarah noted yesterday, these have real effects. And so I don't know if the Trump administration didn't sort of appreciate that because they hadn't politically vetted it or if it's a feature, not a bug, but they actually just want to sow a lot of chaos. I don't know, but I can't wait to sort of see what happens over the course of the next couple of days.
Jon Fansmith: Well, and I think you hit on some things that are really important when you think about this, right? Normally, either things we expect even when they're unexpected, generally we understand what the plan is, right? We understand the goals, the motivations behind it. This took Congressional Republicans by surprise and they had to spend the day fielding calls from constituents like you pointed out, who are worried about benefits they relied on not being available to them. And I think you started to see the drumbeat of response from the administration, the additional Q&A document, the revised guidance coming later. They're saying, "No, no, no individual benefits. Individual benefits, SNAP specifically, Medicaid is exempted." We saw this kind of rush to explain that "No, we're not doing that." But as you point out, the original memo made none of that especially clear, and then they circulated to the agencies, the 700 something page Excel spreadsheet of programs that needed to have their funding justified, many of which included the programs a leader came out a day later and said, "Oh no, these were never intended to be covered." Well, if they were never intended to be covered, why would you ask the agencies?
They really moved at a pace that the agencies were caught off guard, Congressional Republican allies were caught off guard. Certainly you think about Republican governors and state legislatures and Democrats certainly, and of course in Democrats we saw on the political side seized on this throughout the day yesterday. Chuck Schumer essentially told his caucus, "Find the examples of where this hurts and make sure people see it. This is what this administration is doing." Of course, they're going to seize on it, but taking your allies off guard puts them in a terrible position where they either have to articulate how they differ from you and your viewpoints or explain that they are somehow supportive of something their constituents overwhelmingly see as a negative.
And we ended really the webinar yesterday with that affirmation of call your representatives, explain what this means to your campus, explain what this means to students you work with, because that is what affects change. The reason we saw, I believe, the pulling back over the end of the day yesterday from the administration, the narrowing of what it covered, the trying to draw focus just to the executive orders that had been issued last week, was that, that reaction as much from the Republican colleagues as it was from the criticism they inevitably would've faced from Democrats regardless of what they'd announced.
So it is in some ways a 36-hour micro class and mass political action. We've seen all these intersecting factors come to play. I'll also just say, it's not well-managed, right? None of this gives you a lot of confidence that this was well-thought-out, that there was an intentionality to it, that there was a consideration of the likely impact, which is concerning because something of this magnitude, you talked about, it's unprecedented. We don't have a lot of vocabulary to talk about legally or politically because presidents generally have not attempted something like this. The fact that it might've been done somewhat impulsively without the kind of reaching out to your allies, without the messaging, without testing a resonance, the receptivity of the American public, it's not a great sign for the kind of governance we're going to get if we are expecting more of this and at this point, I have no reason to think we shouldn't. This is sort of governing by chaos.
Sarah Spreitzer: You know what-
Mushtaq Gunja: One other thing, Sarah, you asked what does the injunction mean? Let me just say, so the memo is on hold until Monday at 5, at which point, and there'll be some arguments sometime before that, but if the stay weren't imposed, the memo would be enforced. So although we have a temporary sort of reprieve here, the danger is still extremely high. So we're going to be in, at some point in the next few days, there will be some arguments that are about either extending the stay or holding until other courts are able to take this up. But the danger, I can't stress enough, is not alleviated here. This is just a few days worth of reprieve.
Sarah Spreitzer: And in fact, Mushtaq, I think we're going to do another live podcast early next week because obviously there will be a lot more to talk about.
Jon Fansmith: But I think you'll really, certainly, given the engagement we saw yesterday, I think you'll appreciate as we try to unpack as much talk about everything that's been happening and that'll be up in just a minute.
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Jon Fansmith: Thank you to all of you for joining us. Realize it was last minute and realize there was always a lot happening on campuses. So we appreciate you finding the time to join us and certainly hope this will be helpful to you. We are going to go over really what's changed over the last week, and particularly with attention to the memo from the OMB at the White House Office of Management and Budget. To do that, I am very, very happy to be joined by ACE's President Ted Mitchell and my government relations colleague, Sarah Spreitzer, who, as all of you know, if you follow what we do, are invaluable resources not just in the policy space, but to our members across the field of higher education. So Ted and Sarah, thanks for joining us.
Ted Mitchell: Thank you, Jon.
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah, what else would I be doing?
Ted Mitchell: Right. Volunteer [inaudible 00:13:13]
Jon Fansmith: I have a few ideas for other things you could be doing. Yeah. Sarah, I will reveal to this audience what you said to me right before we stepped apart, which is that...
Sarah Spreitzer: Oh, God.
Jon Fansmith: The last day has felt like a month, and I think for those of you on a campus, as true as that may be here in Washington, DC trying to understand the flurry of news coverage and announcements and agency notices and everything else that is touching on really fundamental and central and core aspects of the work you do on a campus, it must be even worse. And so I want to assure you, we here in Washington at ACE are doing our best on your behalf to get as much clarity as we can to provide as much information to you as we can, and also to help as best we can shape what we are seeing coming out of the federal government. It is a very fluid situation. A lot of these things are happening. They're very much in flux, and I think the more we talk about this too, we'll see that even from the executive branch's side, even from the administration side, there's probably not the level of clarity and coordination that you would expect given the size and scope of the announcement we've seen.
So with that kind of as a background, maybe Sarah, Ted, does it make sense for me just kind of launch into quickly what we know as of the moment and then get into questions and discussion a little bit further?
Ted Mitchell: Jon, before you do that, just a bit of an introduction, and again, thanks everybody for taking time. There are over 2,000 of you joining us today, which I think speaks to the urgency of the OMB memo, but also speaks, I think, to the intense confusion that we all have. Hopefully we can straighten some of that out today, but we will by no means answer all of the questions, but be assured that we are... I've got four screens open here, so I'm trying to stay as abreast of the news as I can. Kind of always wanted to have Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room music playing in the background. Maybe next time we can do that. But listen, I want to start out by saying that from our point of view, this is horrible, horrible public policy. It's horrible public policy in the substance. Important, significant programs for the American people are being frozen and limited, and whether it's some housing assistance or grants to our own research infrastructure, those aren't just, "Oh, well, maybe we should do them."
They're critical to keeping the wheels moving, to keeping our, in many cases, most disadvantaged fellow citizens from the services they need and keeping us in higher education from moving forward with our students and our research. It's also procedurally horrible public policy. This impacts billions of federal dollars literally overnight, and that's not public policymaking, that's institutional destruction. So I am sorry that we are where we are today, but we will do our best to help guide you through it and come out the other side as strong as we need to be to support America's bright future. Jon.
Jon Fansmith: Thank you, Ted, and as always, very well said and I think as impactful as this is on our campuses and to the work that we all do, certainly worth keeping in mind that we're about one part of this story and the impacts on our citizens, our fellow citizens, on our economy, on the things we need to accomplish as a nation, profoundly harmful, and it is the exact opposite of what you would hope to see in terms of decision-making.
I'm going to just very quickly walk through what we know. I want to emphasize again where Ted landed, there is a lot of confusion here. We're going to do our best to clarify it, but I will be as clear as possible with an understanding of what we have before us. The Office of Management and Budget, the primary administrative office within the White House, a two-page memo from that office was leaked to media last night. It has been confirmed. There's no question as to its veracity. The memo outlined a freeze on all federal spending going out with the exception of what was called assistance to individuals. There was not great clarity provided in that overview as to the criteria for what constituted either assistance to individuals or the criteria that would be used to evaluate that program funding that was being frozen, a grant funding or program funding.
The rationale for doing it was primarily it was very rhetorical. The rationale was essentially that the federal government was imposing a freeze on all federal spending, all federal disbursements of funds in order to make sure that spending was aligned with the administration's priorities and was not being used for purposes, and again, a lot of rhetorical things about the New Green Deal and woke genderism and other things that are probably familiar messaging we've seen from the campaign days. As I said, not a lot of clarity within that memo as to what that meant. Subsequent documents have emerged since we had a longer document that was sent to agencies from OMB. It's about a 700-page Excel spreadsheet that detailed a listing of tens of thousands of programs, all of which the relevant agencies will need to answer a list of questions which were provided at the top of that document back to the Office of Management by February 7th. Subsequent to that becoming available, a document became available today, a two-page Q&A document from the Office of Management and Budget that attempts to address some of the questions they've heard related to this policy.
I'm going to touch on a couple different things here, but I'm going to start by talking about Federal Student Aid. When we first heard about this, that was our immediate question, what would be the impact on the Federal Student Aid programs as people on this webinar certainly know, while student aid is individually determined, it is awarded to individual students based on their unique circumstances. The actual disbursement of funds goes directly to institutions, so it was not clear exactly what the impacts would be. As of this morning, we began to hear that the Department of Education's intent was that Pell Grants and student loans would be excluded from the freeze. They would not be subject to the freeze, and then later a department spokesperson made a statement to the media to that effect saying Pell Grants and student loans would not be included.
We have since seen reports, I think most prominently the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators publicly put a post out on X saying that they had talked with the department and had been told that guidance was forthcoming possibly as soon as today that would state that all Title IV federal financial aid programs were excluded from the freeze. So beyond just Pell and student loans, things like Federal Work-Study, SEOG, other financial aid programs available to students through Title IV. I think that is certainly encouraging. I just want to qualify that a little bit. That is, I have no doubts as to what our NASFAA colleagues were told. We have not yet seen that formal written guidance as we are here talking. We certainly hope that is the case that we'll get that guidance. We hope that that guidance is forthcoming soon and that it will be as expansive as possible and protecting these programs that are so vital to low income students.
But again, we have not formally seen that yet. So we have heard reports from institutions that they have been able to draw down Title IV funds through the federal systems today. So we are aware that in other areas, some of the areas Ted mentioned, federal funds have not been able to be drawn down. That is a hopeful sign that these reports are true. So that in terms of things to be somewhat reassured about, I would put that near the top of the list because that is certainly one of our biggest areas of concern. I also want to say as we talk about this on behalf of institutions, we are talking right now about Department of Education. There are grants and other forms of funding for colleges, universities across thousands of programs, across dozens of agencies. We do not have at this point clear guidance from all of those agencies as to all those programs.
So a lot of this, it appears, I think I can say this, for a lot of these programs, the agencies themselves are catching up to what the OMB Memo is saying. What is abundantly clear is that this was not released in coordination across multiple agencies. The agencies appear to be kind of scrambling to catch up to the policy being directed from the White House.
A final thing before we start opening it up to the discussion, this has come up a lot in Washington, DC, you might have seen some coverage of this. There is a law on the books, it was put in place in the Nixon administration, called the Impoundment Control Act. The Impoundment Control Act was devised by Congress, put into law specifically to limit the ability of the administration to freeze, pause, redirect, withhold congressionally directed funding out. If the administration wants to withhold funding, it requires them to provide advanced notice to Congress to identify with great specificity which funding in particular is being frozen or withheld, and for what purpose and a specific timeframe under which that will be in place. It is really intended to allow for exceptional circumstances where there may be cause for concern or a reason to suspend for very specific circumstances a federal program.
Many people have raised the idea that this is a clear violation of the Impoundment Control Act. I wish Mushtaq was here. He's told me repeatedly he is not a constitutional scholar, but he's far closer to one than I am. We had a lively discussion about this. It seems clear to me at least that the Impoundment Control Act would be determinative as to the legality of this action by the administration. Certainly some people share my views. We've heard of two lawsuits already being filed to seek an injunction to this action. A lot of things are going to happen over the next few days that will shape the outcome of this effort. And I see some of you are posting links to the lawsuits in the chat as well, so I'm aware of the New York one, the DC federal court ones. I'm sure there are more coming as we go forward. Sarah, Ted, I might just leave it there. There is a lot uncovered and a lot to still cover. Maybe it makes sense to start reaching out first for your reactions and looking at the questions we're getting in from people.
Ted Mitchell: I think the important thing, and thanks, Jon, really extraordinary summary and as the chat indicates we're going to be getting news as we're speaking. I think the important thing to recognize in this is that the default for all programs, and this is government-wide, the default is that the agencies, the granting agencies need to essentially make these investigations about the congruence of the grant programs with the administration's aims, or in this case, the things that the administration is moving to quell. So unless something is exempted, it's in the pot to be reviewed. And so that will be your 791-page reading assignment for today. I think the other thing that Jon was mentioning is that direct services programs seem to be unaffected, circle drawn around them. That's good news, not only for us, but for citizens who are involved in various support programs administered by the federal government.
That said, there's been a number of questions about TRIO, for example, and TRIO is a program that is supported to institutions, not to individuals, and so is likely to be on the list. Well, it is on the list, and is likely to be reviewed subject to the requirements of the OMB Q&A. So it's individual, roughly okay. Institutional, it's all going to be reviewed. And what's particularly amazing is that the deadline for the reviews, Sarah, is so short, and I know from my time in the education department, we had hundreds of grant programs, each of whom had many beneficiaries. And the idea that we would review those against these criteria over a seven, eight-day period, I don't know what plan that comes from, but it's certainly not the one I know.
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah. So I would flag a few things. And Ted, you're right. It's a really quick turnaround that agencies are going to have to get this information to OMB by February 7th, and until they do that, there is going to be this complete freeze. And by that, they mean no funding decisions being made for any grants that were in process, no applications will be being accepted for notices of federal opportunities. And then also institutions or researchers that have grants that have already been awarded that are waiting for an additional disbursement, that is also on hold. We don't believe that anything in this order would allow them to claw back money. But even if your grant was funded, if it hasn't been dispersed, it looks like that would be on hold.
So I wanted to start with last week, we saw a flurry of executive orders, some of which put a pause on some of our funding agencies. So we saw stop work orders at the Department of State and at USAID, which are already impacting some of our institutions. We also saw a pause put on the Department of Health and Human Services for all of the agencies including the National Institutes of Health. So when I heard about this memo late last night, I assumed that it was something similar and not actually across the entire federal government. So you may have already heard about some of those funding pauses. This is different. This goes far beyond what was happening at HHS. I would also say to Jon's point about the Impoundment Act in the Q&A document that was just released by OMB, I think the White House is being inundated with questions. To Ted's point about the separate agencies, they are all, I think, maybe not in a panic, but they all seem to be either proactively removing things from their website in a wait and see situation or telling different things to grantees.
And so the White House needs to determine what agencies are going to put out to implement this order. To Jon's point about the Impoundment Act and kind of how it might be tested in the courts, that Q&A document that was actually just put out by OMB said that this is not an impoundment, that rather it is temporary pause to give agencies time to ensure the financial system conforms to the policy set out by the president's executive order and then list the various executive orders. It's still a pause. That's not going to change anything. And even though they have until February 7th, how long is it going to take the White House to review every single grant program to ensure it is aligned with these EOs? And is that actually legal based on the fact that Congress has already appropriated this money and many of these programs are actually created under statute and some of their restrictions and rules are put forth by statute whether or not there's an executive order?
Ted Mitchell: Yeah, this is an abridgment of the responsibility and the rights, frankly, of Congress to appropriate funds. And so, I don't sit in Congress, I don't intend to sit in Congress, but I'd be mighty upset if I'd been a member whose bill was attached to grant programs that are currently being funded doing the work intended by the statute. And I think it's probably worth our members' time to make sure that your members of Congress understand the difficulty that this puts you in and the compromise that this is of their rights and authorities.
The other thing that I might talk about a little bit here is that, Sarah, you mentioned that there are agencies and others who are sort of preemptively trying to address some of the concerns that are raised by the OMB memo, and I think that that will be up to each institution to decide how they want to deal with that and how they want manage it. But in terms of process, there's also no signal that there will be any kind of appeal process that there will be any kind of information request, right? Who knows on what basis these grants will actually be evaluated? So it's going to be a rough time.
Sarah Spreitzer: Ted, some of it, I'm reminded of the first Trump administration where these very large policy announcements were made with less consideration for how they might be implemented. That's somewhat what this feels like. I don't know, Jon, if that's your sense too.
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, I think there's a few things that are somewhat telling in that regard. Certainly, we are familiar with this across multiple administrations. This is unusual in the regard that generally an announcement of this scale, given the impact across multiple agencies, there's a level of coordination. In fact, you tend to hear about these things because they leak from various sources in advance. And the fact that what we are seeing is the Department of Education very clearly developing guidance to accompany this after it became public is I think indicative of the fact that this was moving at a pace where either the agencies weren't brought in necessarily or this wasn't ready for public release. So I think this isn't a large ways part of the problem here. There are well-established federal procedures for reviewing whether grants and programs and awards are the appropriate use of federal funds, and that involves the congressional authorization and appropriation processes. It involves federal agencies doing rule makings or award making procedures, all of which are subject to review. And all of this is done on an annual basis and as needed.
I laughed a little bit about the question and answer about is this a violation of the Impoundment Control Act? No, it's not a violation. Again, I think people would certainly disagree. There are multiple avenues if the administration has concerns with here. In fact, as you pointed out, Sarah, when you are talking specifically about the ones subject to the executive orders that were issued last week, that process was underway. Institutions had been receiving notices from agencies. There was a viable mechanism in place. Again, I have grave concerns about that approach as well and how it is being used. But that said, it was certainly more limited and targeted to the concerns that this administration has.
Doing something like this is such an unprecedented expansion that it does certainly seem to violate the authorities of the president to violate the law. And also, I noticed there was a question in the chat, and I'm doing my best to kind of keep up with what is coming in, but somebody said, "Well, the Q&A guidance just released, said this applies only to the certain specific executive orders that were issued." I think there is perhaps a bit of backtracking by the administration in that. Certainly the list we saw distributed to agencies, the hundreds, thousands of programs subject to review indicated that that was not their intent in the first place.
And to your point, Sarah, it's not just that the White House is being besieged by people with questions. If you are a member of Congress, as Ted pointed out on the Republican side as well as the Democratic side, who sees your authority to shape federal spending and what that means for your constituents being disrupted, if you are a governor of a state who suddenly has to figure out what the implications are for your programs serving your students, whether that's law enforcement or public health or public safety or whatever, you have real concerns about what this would mean.
And so we may be, this is speculative, I have no... But certainly being to see the administration backtracking on some of this, they may have frankly just gotten their head a little too far out over their skis. Again, in a lot of ways, the harm is already being done. Even if that's what's happening, that's not sufficient, but certainly that is a more hopeful case. Then they are committed to the policy as clearly originally intended and are pushing it forward. Again, a lot uncertain, but the scope, the magnitude, the impact I think is probably being to hit home for not just people across the country, but for this administration.
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah. One thing in that Q&A document I found interesting, Jon, was when they talk about the fact that this will not impact individuals, the idea that federal funding at our institutions doesn't impact individuals, it does, right? But it lists out like it won't impact farmers. And I immediately thought about USDA extension grants, which many of our institutions go out into those communities to provide services, and many of those people are farmers. Is that going to be something that's going to be exempted? I think again, they're going to keep having these examples brought up of, is this something that's exempted? In the chat, our colleague, Vanessa Herman, raised the issue of the GI Bill, right? Are TA benefits covered under this? Are VA benefits covered under this? Maybe, maybe not. The VA and Department of Defense are going to have to put out more specific guidance.
Jon Fansmith: Right. And one of the things, and it's come up multiple times in chat, Title III and Title V programs, the institutional support for HBCUs and TCUs and HSIs and other minority-serving institutions. Again, all we know at this moment is that the department seems to be indicating that Title IV programs, which are seen as a direct benefit to individuals will be exempted from the freeze. Title III and Title V do not seem to meet that criteria for the exemption. Now you say the money's going to institutions, they support the institutions, but the reason that funding was provided by Congress in the first place, the reason it's bipartisanly popular programs for decades, is because of the understanding that these are institutions often under-resourced, often unfairly denied equivalent resources than their peer institutions, serving populations that have greater needs than a lot of their peer institutions. And so you can say, "Well, this isn't a direct benefit to students." But I think we all know absolutely that support translates into the student experience at those campuses. That support allows for resources to be made available to students to have the quality of education they go to those institutions looking for.
So, there is a little bit of, which is understandable of this is politics in a lot of ways. This is the driving force behind this. There's a little bit in the Q&A and some of these other documents of trying to explain why they're pursuing this path. But again, these are not new issues. Every administration has disagreements with federal funding. Every president's budget includes programs for elimination or consolidation or restructuring. There are a lot of ways to do this, and this has not been done before because this is not the way to do this.
Sarah Spreitzer: One question that we got in the discussion, Jon and Ted, was, "are congressional earmarks included in this pause?" And I think that that's interesting given the fact that folks are calling their congressional members. I believe they would be included under this pause. If the funding has not yet been dispersed, they would be included. And obviously that would be something to flag for the member of Congress that championed that.
Ted Mitchell: That's certainly my reading of it, Sarah.
Jon Fansmith: I would agree. Most, at least through the Department of Education, most project funding goes through the FIPC account, and that's not a protected Title IV account. It is not a direct benefit to individuals. Under the criteria that at least has been released so far, I cannot imagine that project funding would not be frozen as well.
Sarah Spreitzer: So one of the questions that keeps coming up in the chat is what should institutions be doing? Any advice?
Jon Fansmith: Right back to you. Right.
Sarah Spreitzer: I'm looking at both of you, because I'm not sure if I have any advice besides understanding that they are messaging this as a temporary pause and keeping track of how this is impacting your institution.
Jon Fansmith: Yeah. I'll jump into it and feel free as well. I think there's a couple different things, and you touched on one of them. I think letting your legislators know what this means to your campus, what this is doing in terms of suspending biomedical research or interfering with your ability to serve your students or interrupting the planning of institutional activities or frankly causing enough uncertainty in terms of your mid-year budgeting and where you can allocate resources, the harms that it is causing. I think the more that message resonates across the political spectrum, the less likely we'll be to see efforts like this going forward and the quicker to resolve this one in particular.
The other thing is, and I can't speak to every individual institution circumstances. They vary so widely, right? Some institutions will have the resources to look at an eight or 10 day suspension of federal support in certain areas and reprioritize or realign what they're doing. I think for a lot of institutions, this is something we've been talking to our members, to the media, to others about today, is that for most institutions, you enter a year with very careful plans around what your revenue is, what activities you are pursuing, the courses of study you wish to offer based on understandings of what your enrollments are and what your resources are. And to say midway through the year, a week, two weeks of time, significant sources of external support will simply be put on hold, no one institution has the formula to fix that, and it's going to have profound impacts.
We get asked a lot, "Well, it's only eight days or it's only 10 days. How much harm can that really do?" Well, Sarah, you've done a great job explaining to me what suspending the different scientific research grants proposal consideration meetings means this isn't a two-week delay, this is months, if not a permanent opportunity missed across all other areas of operations. It's not as simple as flip the switch on, flip the switch off and come back to it. So it is. I don't know that I have clear advice for campuses, but Ted, maybe you do.
Ted Mitchell: Well, not so much other than to, I think this reminds me a lot of the early days of COVID when we didn't know that it was going to be a lengthy period and we were talking about short-term interruptions of scientific research, short-term disruptions of student life, and hopefully this will resolve itself. But the same issues pertain, and Jon, you're exactly right. For well-resourced institutions, there are sources of funds to see us over the drought. For other institutions, this is going to be a very close thing in the same way that providing resources during COVID was a very close thing. Unfortunately, we can't appeal to the government in this instance for relief funds against the government action. That would be sort of interesting, but I don't think it's going to get much headway.
And so I think it's going to be very important for us nonetheless, to make an accounting of this. What is it costing us? And that's information that can be useful when you talk to your congressional members, if you're writing letters to the administration or OMB. What does it mean? Because I can't help but think that the folks who, as you said Jon, got ahead of their skis, got ahead of their skis, I can't help but think that they thought that this was not going to be the big deal that it really is for our institutions, our researchers, our faculty, our staff, and certainly our students. So I think the best thing we can do is keep careful track of the impact of this on our operations and make that known as broadly as we can.
Sarah Spreitzer: I think ultimately what is our ask to the White House, it's that they rescind this very problematic memo. And Ted, you said that very clearly in your statement, and I'll ask the producers to put that into the chat so that folks can see it and use it in their own messaging to members of Congress or to their community.
We did have a couple questions in the chat about grant programs I guess at the federal research agencies. I talked about the fact that the grant review process is on hold at least we know for some programs. It's hard to tell how broadly this is being applied. So I will say we've seen one agency actually go as far as to take down notices of funding opportunities. We've also seen the National Science Foundation cancel some peer review panels. I'm not sure if they're going to be canceling all of them. I'm not sure if they are going to be taking down the grant funding announcements, which there are some that are due this week.
Again, because there is so much confusion among the agencies, it may become clear tomorrow that they are all on the same page. I think some agencies are being incredibly active or proactive in removing some of the things from their website as they're undergoing this pause. I think for other agencies, because of however, the amount of work that they have, I mean, NSF makes hundreds of grant programs. How are they going to handle this OMB Memo? So I just wanted to share that.
Ted Mitchell: There's a question in the chat about pass-through grants. Yes, those are subject to the freeze.
Jon Fansmith: And I want to note I'm monitoring the chat as we go through and really appreciate everybody's thoughts and contributions. It looks like, and apologies if I get the name wrong, but Lisa Wetzig reported that The Washington Post is reporting that the administration has now clarified that the freeze only applies to programs and a pause on grants applies only to programs involving foreign aid, immigration and DEI.
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah, I don't know about that. We did see the pause last week on foreign aid, which was through USAID and then again with the State Department in order to ensure that those programs came in line with the executive orders that we saw on the America First Foreign Policy. This is different because this is a pause, not a stop-work order.
Jon Fansmith: There are certain things that seem to belie the idea that this is narrowly targeted just to grant programs in those areas. I'd also say as we learned about, and I think you've done a great job sort of talking about this, Sarah, how a program that is related to DEI is being defined by this administration, how programs that are being identified as wasteful are being identified by this administration. I think we would have a lot of questions about those determinations and how scrupulously those determinations are being made. So certainly, again, hopeful that this may reflect an effort to start backtracking by the administration. I think we're seeing enough evidence right now that there is good reason for concern.
Ted Mitchell: And I think on this new information from The Post, I think that what's interesting is that it eliminates certain programs that are most surely on Mr. Trump's agenda, climate policy, international climate accords, things that were specifically called out in the earlier document. So again, I think we're in the middle of this and we'll see some things as the days and weeks progress.
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah, Ted, I would just say for those that have not read that 70-page Excel spreadsheet that they're asking for agencies to respond to, it calls out programs that may be touched by DEI, programs that may be implicated by the rescission of the U.S .International Climate Plan. It looks at whether or not the program promotes gender ideology so much broader than just DEI and foreign assistance.
Ted Mitchell: So I think the big question, and Laurie McQuay Penninger asked, "What can we do to protect programs?" And I think that this is not just a today question. It's a question that really we began thinking about during the campaign and following the campaign. The DEI executive order certainly called the question about a number of our programs. And on DEI, and we haven't talked about this, but one of the things that I found really important in the DEI executive order was that the standard of proof that the administration seems to be edging toward about whether DEI programs are acceptable or not, which has to do with an interpretation that they will make of the discriminatory elements of DEI and the yardstick they'll use is the Supreme Court's SFFA decision. And so if one wants to sort of pre-screen, I think that that's the standard that the administration is likely to use. They've given agencies 12 weeks to come up with a precise definition in their context of how the SFFA definition of discrimination would apply to programs and grants administered by those agencies. And then a search that those agencies will make across their domains of expertise to identify, I think it's very specific, nine bad actors whose practices violate their discriminatory interpretation of DEI. And they have 12 weeks, the departments have 12 weeks to perform this analysis. And then another period of time that I don't remember to be able to identify the list of nine, right?
Jon Fansmith: The same timeframe, a 120 days shift in the executive order.
Ted Mitchell: 120 days.
Jon Fansmith: So about a 110 days from now.
Ted Mitchell: Great, thank you. And then I think in our context that the aim is to identify institutions whose endowments are greater than $1 billion.
Jon Fansmith: Right. The nine institutions must have an endowment of a billion dollars or greater to be on the list of worst actors.
Ted Mitchell: And so one might suggest that this has other objectives as well as identifying discriminatory DEI programs.
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, I would certainly say, and we've said this before, I think if you are looking for the, and again, I think to be clear, we would strenuously disagree with the administration's views in these areas, but assuming you agree with their views, if you were looking for the areas where you seek the worst abuses, confining yourself to a very small fraction of the overall institutional pool, it doesn't make a lot of sense and does seem to indicate what the goal of that provision is.
Sarah Spreitzer: So I have a question for both of you based on one of the questions I see in the chat is somebody has asked, "Does this pause in spending actually allow for temporary budget savings or help to reduce the overall debt for the debt obligations?" Is this meant to actually reduce federal spending or is this meant to make a policy statement? What is the goal?
Jon Fansmith: So if it's meant to reduce spending, then it's a clear violation of the Impoundment Control Act because they would be suspending congressionally directed funding. By the justification of the OMB, this is a temporary pause to review the programs to ensure that they align with the executive orders, the administration's priorities, and that they are, in their terminology, wasteful or whatever else. And so they're putting in place a sort of extraordinary process for doing that work across the federal government all at once. It should not theoretically generate budget savings because again, the administration's ability to unilaterally suspend the congressionally directed funding to terminate that funding is exceedingly limited. So while you may delay funds going out within a certain period, they've been allocated, they have been appropriated, and they will ultimately have to be awarded and counted against the federal deficit regardless of the fiscal year in which they're actually dispersed. It does not work as a budget savings maneuver. And to their credit, the administration has not claimed any other purpose for this other than good governance as they see it.
Ted Mitchell: This makes me tempted to call up the electric company and my cable provider and say that I'm taking a pause while I reflect on whether their services align with my particular policy preferences, but I don't think that that will work either.
Sarah Spreitzer: That's a good analogy, Ted. We also have a few questions in here about whether or not this is similar to a government shutdown, which many of our campuses have been through the last couple of years. We've seen these government shutdowns. I think one of the biggest differences is we have a lot of preparation for that. We have instructions coming from the agencies about what is going to be considered essential, what will be paused, and what happens during those shutdowns is the longer it goes on, the more impacts we see at our institutions, which I think is similar, right to this pause. The longer that we see this pause happen, the more we are going to see the impact on our students and our institutions. But it is, at the same time, different than a government shutdown.
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, I would say, I think there's a couple things, the similarities you pointed out, Sarah, certainly the longer it goes, the worse it would be. But the biggest thing is what you identified at the being, there is time to prepare. There's an understanding of the rules of the road. There's clarity on what's covered or not. This is sort of the running, it was kind of a joke, kind of a discussion here in Washington, DC as you approach a shutdown, who is essential, right? Who gets designated as essential? Because certain services are considered to be essential because there's a basic understanding that suspending them even for a few days will have a really negative impact on our country to there is a reason all of that preparation and all of that planning and all of that transparency is in place. And it's because they're so well understood by both sides that staves off harm that even in a short period of time.
This is not that, right? This was not a policy that was consultative with Congress. This was not a policy that was consultative with stakeholders or those individuals and organizations directly impacted by these decisions. It seems relatively clear it was not done one in great consultation with the agencies themselves in terms of areas of vulnerability or concern. So it does seem like a very hasty action, and you're seeing that. The chat is an indication. The emails we've gotten from members are an indication. It does not have to be a month-long process for this to be harmful. The harm's already happening.
Ted Mitchell: And I think, Jon, to emphasize that, I think that the other piece about a government shutdown is that we're well-practiced at picking up the pieces after a government shutdown and there's no indication that there will be any consideration for the damages that have been done to our institutions and to our communities when and if the freeze is lifted.
Sarah Spreitzer: And that kind of goes to some of the questions that we have in the chat about specific grant programs. So there's a lot of people worried about TRIO. There's a lot of people worried about CCAMPIS, which are grant programs at the Department of Education. I'm not sure where they are in the grant cycle, but obviously the longer this goes on, the more impactful this could be. So will the TRIO competition go on this year as scheduled? I don't know the schedule off the top of my head, but I would say it likely is included under the current pause for that funding going forward. Again, understanding that the existing funding that's already out there for TRIO can be allowed to continue.
Ted Mitchell: So, it really is just the only relief is for funds that have already been dispersed and that any funds that have not been dispersed are being held.
Sarah Spreitzer: Yes. And I would just repeat what Jon said at the beginning. We do know that last week under as part of the DEI executive order, there were instructions going to some campuses to stop work on grants that were specifically about DEI or had a DEI portion of their grant. This action is different than that.
Ted Mitchell: A question in the chat about whether this will have an impact on the upcoming Carnegie Classifications. I think that's the easy question of the day. No.
Sarah Spreitzer: They're still on schedule.
Ted Mitchell: They're still on schedule.
Jon Fansmith: There was one question I just saw that I thought was interesting too. Someone asked about, "Is this a means to advance executive power?" And I'll throw back to the conversation Mushtaq and I were having before I joined. I think that's actually a big part of what this effort is intended to be. The first Trump administration, especially towards the end, raised questions about the president's authority to award or direct funding that came from Congress in ways that were more aligned with their priorities. We heard that conversation around building the wall was a big feature about could you reallocate money from the Department of Defense for that purpose? I think absolutely. This is an administration that has been very clear that they want to pursue a very aggressive interpretation of the limits of executive authority. I think they are hopeful, I might disagree with them, but hopeful that the federal judiciary, the Supreme Court, would agree with their interpretation in this regard.
I'll also say when you look at what most scholars have written in the last day about this, the legal precedents are very, very clear in favor of the Impoundment Control Act having the authority here and the president not, and certainly the Supreme Court over the last two years has absolutely gutted executive authority by essentially eliminating Chevron deference. It is hard to look at those two factors in combination and say, "This is a good test case to push the boundaries of executive authority." But again, I guess nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? If they don't perceive the harm it's doing in other areas and it's an exercise intended for that purpose, then it may be worth pursuing to their minds.
Ted Mitchell: I think that's right, Jon. And I do think that the lesson for us though is that if the executive authority is going to be pressed at every opportunity, we really need to push back at appropriate opportunities because they'll push until they can't anymore. And whether that's through legal means or congressional intervention, there needs to be a counterweight. And I think that for all of you on the call, that's one of the things that we're working hard on at ACE is to make sure that the membership knows what's going on and that we can act individually, but with a collective sense of purpose around these things. And this will not be the last time we convene like this. I'm very, very grateful for everybody's time today, but this is likely to be the kind of thing that we need to talk about periodically as the Trump administration and again, I'm with you, Jon, no matter whether you believe in the particulars or not, tries to extend executive authority into places that really begin to compromise institutional autonomy, congressional authority, and I would say the wellbeing of policymaking.
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, and I'll say we are heading to the point of wrapping up. I know there are a number of questions too. A lot of people ask about what does having a program listed on the spreadsheet indicate? Probably not as clear as we could be about this. These are programs that were targeted for review from the agencies. There is an understandable confusion because that also included Pell grants and student loans, seemingly inconsistent with what we've now heard from the Department of Education. Again, that listing of programs being listed does not mean those programs are exempt from the freeze. That listing was intended to say, "These are the programs that will be subject to review." The heading of that lists the questions that need to be answered about each of those programs as part of the review and the return to OMB.
The fact that you see things like Pell and student loans on there that subsequently were referenced as not being subject to the freeze, again, I think indicates how fluid this is, both in terms of what's happening, but also from the administration side. Again, I do not know this to be a fact, but as we add these things together, there certainly seems to be the beginning of some backtracking by the administration on this. So yes, it is confusing. Apologies if we are adding to your confusion. Anyway, hopefully that helps clarify what that list is and what it means. But I also think it's useful to know that things also seem to be changing even as we discussed them.
Sarah Spreitzer: And Jon, just kind of on a last comment, there were some questions about whether or not work on certain grants needed to be stopped. We talked about this last week about whether or not institutions should be trying to proactively comply with things, and we really need to wait to see the guidance from each agency. And so I would encourage you to wait to see that guidance. I wouldn't stop any work that's ongoing with the grant. Again, this was a big announcement, a big policy change, but we haven't had all the details. And as Jon said, the details have been changing throughout the day.
Ted Mitchell: And they will. And I just want to put my thumb on the scale of avoiding preemptive compliance to rules and regulations and things that we don't know enough about.
Jon Fansmith: And I will also do the take care of the business matter here too. This is a subject certainly of great interest. It is one of many subjects we'll be covering when we convene for the ACE Experience 2025 here in Washington, DC, at the Kennedy Center next month, February 12th and 13th. Ted, I'm sorry, I got those dates right, right? I'm always a little shaky.
Sarah Spreitzer: Yes.
Jon Fansmith: Okay. So these are the kinds of discussions we'll be having with leaders from across higher education. We certainly encourage you who haven't already registered to come and join us. We'd love to have these conversations offline, maybe over a drink or two too. Maybe that's the format they're best suited for. But we really are tremendously appreciative of all of you, not just for taking your time today, but for your support of ACE, for the work you do on your campuses, the concerns you raise to your members of Congress and your state legislatures. We really do represent an amazing community and you all are the evidence of that. So thank you so much for taking time. We've appreciated having you. Hope this has been helpful and look forward to keeping in touch with you all going forward.
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